Details
Series curated by Javier Guerrero (Princeton University) & Juana Suárez (New York University)
Marking the 50th anniversary, this September 11, of the military coup against President Allende in Chile, this retrospective is dedicated to Alfredo Castro, the internationally acclaimed Chilean actor whose work is essential to a deep exploration of the cruelty of the dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet (1973-1989). Inspired by the French playwright Antonin Artaud, Castro has theorized the ‘third body,’ a key concept in the study of unknown and unconfessed human drives. In this retrospective, we privilege Castro’s close, decades-long collaboration with the Chilean director Pablo Larraín.
“As an actor, I invoke the most primitive and unlearned parts of myself, memory and oblivion from another time and place, to unleash a ghost that can stage the desired scenes, the most ominous and cruel ones, which definitively activate my organism.” Alfredo Castro.
“Throughout my career I have understood that the act of playing another person requires ending the separation between the actor’s body and the fictional body of the character, allowing for a dissolution of one into the other. This leads me to believe in the existence of a third body, a mediating body between the actor and the character.” Alfredo Castro.
“It is difficult to determine the border between fiction and reality in Pablo Larraín’s filmography. That is why I approach the characters that I have played in his films from the point of view of testimony, like metabolized confessions that require me to inhabit the dangerous and confused limit of insanity… and in that way I get closer to portraying the aspects of life that cannot be portrayed.” Alfredo Castro.
Event information (5th of 8)
Post Mortem. Q&A with Alfredo Castro
Director: Pablo Larraín
2010 / 98min / 35mm
Mario Cornejo (Alfredo Castro) is an unassuming state employee who transcribes notes during autopsies. Furtive and lonely, he becomes obsessed with his neighbor, a dancehall performer (Antonia Zegers) who is involved with a group of left-wing activists. After the 1973 coup and Salvador Allende’s death, the dancer’s friends are hunted down, and Mario's hospital is clogged with dissenters’ bodies. The violence soon grows in Mario's psyche.
“With Post Mortem, Alfredo Castro digs into what totalitarianism can activate in those apolitical subjects who are in the shadows of society. Castro gloriously plays the most dangerous and scariest psychopath of the history of Chile’s cinema, one that could easily be our most ordinary neighbor.” —Series curators Javier Guerrero and Juana Suárez.
Series film screening titles, dates and locations:
Click on links to event posting.
El Conde -Tuesday October 31--Princeton University, East Pyne 010 6:00 pm
Tengo miedo torero / My Tender Matador - Wednesday November 1--Princeton University, East Pyne 010 5:30 pm
El Club / The Club - Thursday November 2—Fordham University, Keating Hall 3 (Rose Hill Campus) 6:00 pm
Los perros / The Dogs - Friday November 3--Princeton University, East Pyne 010 6:00 pm
Post Mortem - Friday November 3-Metrograph 5:30 pm
El Conde - Friday November 3-Metrograph 8:15 pm
Tony Manero - Saturday November 4-Metrograph 2:20 pm
No - Saturday November 4-Metrograph 5:00 pm
Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any event does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.